


a poem you know by heart

by redredrobin



Series: thick as thieves [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, OT3, POV Second Person, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-07 06:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18867604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redredrobin/pseuds/redredrobin
Summary: You were distant, true, unreachable and empty, until two people turned that upside down. Love is supposedly one word for it. You’ve never been able to fit your tongue around it honestly. But calling them your friends, you’ve done that outside of the delirium of an injury or the immediate threat of death. That much, you’re satisfied that you’ve given them.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [voxmyriad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxmyriad) for the speedy beta! all other errors are my own.

Illya and Gaby set a date. 

You suspected this was coming since he found out about the baby. You supervised the discussion — you sat outside the closed door and enjoyed a glass of whiskey listening to the conversation inside, ensuring no one disturbed them and no one left until the matter was settled. Neither of their decisions came as a shock, and at least this way you get to tease Illya.

You are reasonably certain it’s his, since the math measures up to aftermath of a mission you had not been present for, but timing matters. You suppose you could wait and see, but truthfully, you don’t think it really makes that much of a difference. The three of you share everything, and the idea of caring about biological lineage is truly laughable. None of your families had much to leave you, and any child would have nothing to lose and everything to gain by having Illya as a father instead of you. You have been many men in your life, and you don’t care for that role.

You are already planning the best man speech before Gaby asks you. You say yes, of course, as if you will allow anyone else to do it. You picture them holding it at a beach, or some other bright place, a location with a lot of fresh air and clear sky, that affords good memories. They would be wearing white and you’d be clad all in black, a little buzzed from champagne, but gracious. You’re always extremely gracious, in your opinion. You see absolutely no reason to be otherwise, even if the date marks a definitive end to the way you’ve been carrying on with the two of them. You just don’t see that kind of thing as appealing to you in the least, and you aren’t willing to intrude on the rare happy ending they get to have. 

They deserve it.

* * *

There’s the matter of the wedding gift. You excuse yourself politely on one of your weeks off, dismissing odd looks from the other two, and you set about digging up and fencing a Cézanne you took when you were younger. The sum is extremely tidy, and more than enough to purchase a cottage in the French countryside near Nice, along with a neat plot of land. There’s enough left over for you to save and invest for a rainy day, which you do. And you have other caches. They will never worry about money; they will never have to starve like you did as a boy. 

You tour the property and think it is perfect. It sits on a small hill that has an excellent view of anything approaching, and you can already conceive of some improvements that you intend to write down. There’s a barn, and space on the other side for a garage. Illya will have enough manual labour to keep him happy, and Gaby can run her own work without interference. You make sure there’s no space for you here, just in case the other two are getting ideas — not exactly your speed, is it? You stole every place you had beside anyone else, and those were all temporary. It’s not as though you can _marry_ Illya like Gaby can. Or that she’s an option for you either; you push boundaries all the time, but you are keenly aware of the limits. Still, you have been tied to them for a long while now, and you should start thinking about other whims you want to indulge. 

You always planned to make a sensational return to the world of art theft, when the sentence was up. You expected you’d get something on Sanders, or fake your death spectacularly, and you’d be back to your merry ways. But you moved to U.N.C.L.E., and for the first time in your life, you had belonged somewhere. You had begrudgingly come to rely on Waverly, and you valued an organisation that had given you effective partners. For professionals in the cold, vicious world of the work, they were kind. It wasn’t a very high bar to clear, but you can easily see how things between you three would have been worse if Sanders was breathing down your neck more closely.

You coax them into a visit, after Gaby’s leave is approved. She drives, you are in the front seat with the map. You think Illya is enjoying the sunshine, but you feel his eyes on your back. He’s been looking at you now and then like this, but since you don’t press the matter and he says nothing, you let it be. He has been more reserved these days. Already not the most verbose of conversational partners, your silences have taken on a thoughtful quality. Illya is fiercer on missions, and you think he may have taken to having a reason to fight, a reason to live. Selfishly, you are glad for it. You don’t care to know the man you would have become in the absence of Illya Kuryakin.

Gaby pulls into the driveway and looks at the house. Illya gets out of the car, and you casually drop the house keys into her hands. “Your wedding gift,” you explain. The other two look at you, oddly. “Surely you didn’t think I’d forego it? Come now, I’m a bastard, not a complete ruffian.”

It’s Illya who clears his throat. “Friends do not need to,” he says. Friends. You have studiously avoided labels, save that one — you hadn’t even known you were that cold. You were distant, true, unreachable and empty, until two people turned that upside down. Love is supposedly one word for it. You’ve never been able to fit your tongue around it honestly. But calling them your friends, you’ve done that outside of the delirium of an injury or the immediate threat of death. That much, you’re satisfied that you’ve given them. 

Now you are standing outside the home you will help them make. You have some charming comment on the other up your sleeve, but the first word your mind assigns to it is noble. You have never applied it to yourself before — not even in the War, where you saved other soldiers’ lives.

But you have no time to ponder. Your plan to stay outside and let them explore is overturned the second they each take one of your wrists and drag you inside.

* * *

Illya gets to work immediately. The kitchen takes shape first. You aren’t allowed to meddle, and you sulk about it until you are called in to inspect the final product. You hum in approval as you look through the cabinets and spice rack, and spy a space carved out under the window for a garden. The room is spacious enough to double as a dining room. You aren’t sure why it’s been done to your specifications, but you can’t deny it meets your standards. You offer Illya only a nod of satisfaction, and he smiles at you so warmly you feel your gaze soften with fondness in reply. If you weren’t already sleeping with him, you might have pushed him against the counter and dug in to find out where he kept that treasure hidden.

You do it anyway, and you like that he laughs. 

* * *

The next time you visit, the garage is finished, and so is the master bedroom. You pry open a sliding door that was posing as a wall to find an adjoining room with its own bathroom, with the taps done to a finish you would prefer. The bed and interior is done to your liking as well, with space on the walls for paintings, and lighting you can easily adjust. It’s a lovely little room, rather like a secret, and it appeals to you completely. 

You will only tolerate being kept out of the project so long, however. You take charge of the living room, the study, the entrance hall, and a few spare rooms. You help Illya install a safe room in the basement. You fortify the attic also — it’s you who is skilled in the analysis and use of castles. Outside and in, this is a home for the two people dearest to you in the world. But you will make sure it is strong, physically. False panels, secret holes, escape routes, you meticulously design their fortress. You will share a new secret with their child as you visit, you think. It will keep things exciting.

* * *

They move in the day of the wedding. It was an affair exactly as you imagined, and you can admit privately to yourself you got a little lost in it all. For one, you actually enjoyed the party for reasons that weren’t related to how many watches and necklaces you could have lifted, or how many eyes you could catch. Once, you were concerned only with your own myth, but in the midst of a fairytale ending, you can’t help but smile to yourself a little. You have a ticket back to New York the next morning, and they have your house keys and a standing invitation. You expect one last hurrah before you disappear for good, and Illya and Gaby oblige you, as they always do. You’ll be truly gone in the morning, maybe that’s why you let them do what they like with you, and they are slow.

You lie awake, Gaby in your right, Illya on your left. You don’t move — you’re pinned. All you hear is their contented breathing, and you can’t make yourself look at either of them. You resist brushing Illya’s collarbone with your lips, or tangling your fingers fondly in Gaby’s hair. Far be it for you to resist temptation, but if you do either of these things or anything else wild and true that is racing through your mind, something is going to snap. You can’t afford that wreckage. 

Instead, you lie awake waiting for that ever reliable dull roar in your ears, the coiled and swift thing inside you that resists all forms of captivity.

You are pinned, and it doesn’t come. You wait all night for it. It doesn’t come.

* * *

You manage to slip out of the bed before Illya is up at his usual horrendously early hour. You’d already packed, and have no desire to double check your possessions. You find yourself in the kitchen, where you locate fresh eggs and some other useful items, so you set about making breakfast. It’s to calm the strange, tight feeling in your body, that grew over the night, something that sounds to you like screaming. There’s a record player just outside the door, and you put on the first jazz record that you find and turn it low, letting it drift through their home.

You don’t hear Gaby, so when you turn around and she is there, arms folded, eyes fixed on you, you pause in your work. She’s probably cranky from being woken at this time, or it’s because of something else you’ve done.

You’re sure you haven’t irritated her in the last twenty four hours — at least, not deliberately. In fact you went through a lot of trouble to ensure the best day of her life was exactly that, and you don’t like the idea that she might be unhappy the very day after.

“Thought I’d make you breakfast,” you say, with your usual enthusiasm. “There’s still some time before I have to get to the airport.” You walk over to pull out the chair for her, and she sits, though she’s still looking at you.

“Napoleon,” she says, quietly. She’s rarely gentle with you, and it’s not soft. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

You blink at her in shock, then quickly recover with a false laugh, “No, of course not.” A beat, and you say, too quick, “When have I ever?” You scoff to yourself, but you look away and can’t even sit down to eat with her. No, you flee before Illya can provide her with backup.

Somehow, you end up walking in circles on a well-trodden path; Illya’s, for his walks. You end up in a clearing, leaves falling around you, a riot of colour. It’s something out of a classical painting, and you can never resist art, natural or man-made. You stand there, looking at nothing, the urge to run suggesting you return to the cottage. Which is absurd, as you have been trying to move in exactly the opposite direction. You studiously ignore it. 

You are best at keeping ahead. Forward, onward, away.

* * *

Despite your intentions, Illya ambushes you. No, that’s not quite the word, this is his route, and you are the one intruding. You feel his fingers on your arm, trying to gauge you, loosen you up, and your body obeys his wishes. You hold yourself in check as he enfolds you, your head rests against him, hearing his heart pound in your ears. It’s always thrilled you, that he can wrap you up like this and it never feels like a cage. 

You want to say something, open up a wound and let it pour out of you. But if you do make the cut, it will show that there isn’t any real substance inside. 

You don’t know what you want. You stand there in his arms.

Illya murmurs a request for you to come back inside, low and sweet in your ear. Even now, when he could change his grip in an instant to be a vice, or forcibly carry you away if he wanted, he is trying to let you go.

What are you holding on to? You have been a permanent fixture in their lives for over five years now, and you have grown roots, clever, cunning ones that you can recognise now, with the benefit of hindsight. You don’t know how to say the word love, there is no way you can find that makes it lack bite. You wouldn’t mind that so much, personally, but you know, rationally, it’s not supposed to be like that. It’s a beautiful thing you can neither steal nor produce, a poem you know by heart that you can take out and read, that has spread through you like an infection. The castle you built for yourself has come crumbling down, and you are left alone in the cold.

Only a Russian could traverse the winter of your soul. Illya, emboldened by your lack of resistance, starts to walk you back to the house, his warm, broad hand clasped in yours. Not looking back once, like he is your Orpheus and you are his Eurydice. You are barely there, even just putting one foot in front of the other. There is a horrible roar in your ears, like an oncoming tidal wave, and the sound only stops when the front door is closed behind you. In a moment, everything is clear.

You are a thief. You know a safe place when you see one. 

Your hand is still in Illya’s. You reach for Gaby’s, and it is you who leads them upstairs towards the bedroom. There, you make Illya tie you to the headboard. You warn him there should be no escape route for you. A difficult proposition, given you are slippery around chains, ropes, and all manner of impromptu bindings, but he is thorough. He kisses you, he whispers endless sweetness into your skin, and Gaby smiles at you, her fingers in your hair.

You can barely move as they peel you apart, layer after layer, and when they get to your heart, you expect it to be carved open to show them it’s full of smoke. 

It opens up and sings.

* * *

They have a sapphire each added to their rings, for you. Yours is a simple gold band with two jewels, for the two of them. You don’t have to wear it, but you want to assign it meaning. You often hold it up and let it catch the sunlight, you feel it absently when you are busy about the house, and you almost never remove it. It’s become a convenient excuse for the other two to shower you with sentimental endearments, but you are honest with yourself about this: they began that long ago. 

Illya distracts you often in the kitchen. You are a nuisance to Gaby in the garage, and she is a thunderstorm when she heads for the two of you in the study. 

You taste freedom every second of every hour of every day. It is the purest pleasure you have known.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps it’s fitting, that there’s one for each of you. It certainly appeals to your sense of symmetry, and you appreciate as well that they’ve rehearsed this moment. Illya has sweet David, Gaby has elegant Victoria, and you are stuck with these two scamps.

The months have raced by, and you like what routine you have. Quite frankly, you don’t consider yourself much of a homebody, but you hate to be idle. Work is infrequent. After Gaby procured your freedom (oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation!) you absorbed one of your covers and became an antiquities expert. You stayed affiliated with U.N.C.L.E. as a consultant, where you get to take great pride in cracking new safes, keeping up to date with swiftly progressing technologies, bossing around new recruits and seasoned agents both. You are known for your tyranny among the ranks, but since you practically always succeed on missions you direct, nobody says anything to you. 

You mark targets out of habit, but you are more scrupulous about what you take, and when. You are happiest — you say this freely, feel it liberally — when you are with Illya and Gaby, enforcing your law about your home.

You bring breakfast up for Gaby every day these days, like clockwork, having monitored her diet strictly. Pregnancy has been unpleasant for her — her temper can make paint peel off the walls, and even the two of you, accustomed to hailstorms of bullets, see wisdom in getting out of the way. However, you think you have risen magnificently to the challenge of satisfying her cravings, no matter how bizarre and unexpected. Even when she’s dreadful company, you flit in and out of her space — that kind of thing will hardly stop you coming and going as you please.

Today, Gaby seems thoughtful when you place the tray in front of her, but you decide it would be best to let her think before you blast her with a breezy, cheerful greeting. You settle in with the newspaper, listening to her sip at her tea contentedly. Then, you feel her looking at you. You glance up, your head cants, quizzically.

“Do you want one?”

“Pardon?” you say, puzzled. 

“A child,” she says, like you’re being wilfully dense for some reason. “I said do you want one.”

You pretend to give this the thought it’s due. It’s an absurd question, all told. You have a ring on your finger same as them, but you weren’t aware Gaby considered you a serious possibility. If she did, has she gone quite mad? 

“Well, if the offer is on the table—”

“Don’t pretend,” she warns, coldly. “You know what I’m offering.” Her expression is withering, tearing through you. You have a love-hate relationship with the way she looks at you, like she’s pulled up the hood and is fiddling around with all the parts of you, but that’s what you get for making yourself a complete system, known to them. Someone was bound to try and tinker with you — you can handle people pressing your buttons, but you can still be taken off guard by how freely Gaby fiddles with your inner mechanism. 

Asking her if she’s certain will not get you anywhere. She’s weathered all of this with grace, but you don't want to put her through it again. And you can’t fathom why she’d be asking when the better paternal option is downstairs, outside. You thought this was obvious.

“Surely,” you say, slowly, “Not one for him and one for me? I didn’t take you for the type.”

“I’m not going to do this again in three years,” she replies. 

Ah, the getting it over with, children in a row that you can raise them all together. But is that all? Before you can continue, her eyes narrow, and her retort is swift. “Why _not_ you?”

It’s a neat counterpoint. It annoys you again, and it draws you into her pensive mood. Your hands fold the newspaper, and you sit beside her. The silence between you comes alive with promise. You have settled in nicely here, sweeping up this cottage and its inhabitants in the maw of your belonging, and it’s good to have something so blatantly foreign and achingly familiar to you. But sometimes you wait and listen for something to tell you it’s time to go. Gaby telling you that she wants your child is a classic alarm bell. But your fear is still boxed away where you left it, there’s no feeling in your spine or your feet that tells you to move. You’ve been tossed overboard into an unknown sea, and you find yourself floating very comfortably. 

You glance at your ring. “There are other options,” you muse.

“I know,” she answers, simply.

You lean in to kiss her then, deliberately, wanting to know, and you know the moment she pours herself into it: she's sure. You care for her and guard her no less fiercely than Illya, but in your own way. Always that. Ever since that day in East Berlin, she came with you, when you asked.

Now she’s asking you.

“When he’s here,” you say, because you want Illya to have a son, and you always get what you want, “ask me again.”

* * *

David arrives in the winter. 

Extremely Russian of him, and you’re sure to tell him that first thing, when Gaby lets you hold him. The first of many things you will find frustrating and endearing in equal measure. You adore him at once, and you are given responsibility for his food and his daytime rest, where you get to examine him closely, learning how this all works. Gaby accuses of you of hovering worse than Illya, but you don’t force David to choose, he is _your_ shadow. As soon as he can walk, he clings to your trousers in the kitchen, watching you intently and curiously. You engage him in conversation constantly — he is a good listener, but you expected that.

Once he’s old enough, you have an apron made for him, and start testing him on your culinary secrets. Illya’s influence means he eats everything, but yours ensures the boy has _some_ taste. He takes to it like he was born to: volunteering to grow your vegetables and procuring ingredients from the butcher. You never find anything he gives you below your standards, and you acquaint yourself with this newfound type of pride. 

You wouldn’t mind another like him, even if you know that’s unlikely. He is wholly Illya’s son. A reserved boy, he works hard, and he can hold his own with you. Forgiving in heart, with enough love to hold all three of you and more besides. And he is also _yours_ , not a puzzle to be completed and thrown away, but a living, breathing part of yourself has become his; like this you are twined together.

Gaby does ask you again. You say yes, like it was an effortless mountain to climb.

It was not, but you can pretend.

* * *

Victoria follows, the very last thing she does where that word applies. Her competitive streak takes shape early, and it’s not long before she is the searing presence in every room she’s in. You watch, entirely too amused, as your daughter twists her brother around her little finger. Illya fares no better. You are wise to her ways, but you admit this challenge stymies you some. Your childhood was harsh, with only a struggling single mother and the Depression and the War as your merciless instructors. You have been working hard with David, but he is strong in body and heart, that he can become so in his mind. You aren’t sure how to approach Victoria, to make her strong without turning her cruel. She comes from you, after all, and you have many cruelties to your name, great and small. You don’t want to turn her into her namesake that you faced in Rome, all those years ago.

But the other half of this equation is Gaby, and she absconds frequently with your daughter. You often find them heads together, whispering, hearing their laughter from behind a closed door. It does irk you, to know there’s a place in the house — your home — that is inaccessible to you, when you created all its secrets, but you can’t begrudge your daughter her kinship. She has something you didn’t, and for that you are grateful. You can make her sharp, and your partners can temper her steel with kindness. 

You are each of you Victoria’s shadow, but at least she walks beside Gaby often.

* * *

The twins are an accident. 

There’s a few years’ gap: you all thought two were enough of a handful to fuss about together. Still, you’ve been here before, in the days leading up to meeting David, but this time, you don’t know for certain whose they are. David and Victoria were clearly designated, and resemble their respective fathers, but the twins, as they grow older, deepen the mystery by taking after their mother.

Their attempts at making their own toys are strewn around the house until Illya firmly settles the matter by converting a space in the barn to a small workshop until they’re permitted to share Gaby’s. They spend secret hours in their new private space, and you are often presented with glittering objects fashioned from odds and ends. You clear one of your bookshelves in the study for display, where various ones occupy places of honour and are regularly rotated for your viewing pleasure. You aren’t sure what these are meant to be, but they amuse you. At least you can blame the ardent tinkering on Gaby.

But the twins also hoard, which is blamed on you, except they don’t hoard anything you like, so that’s a mystery as well. They trail in Illya’s wake, laughing and occupying him, ever his dutiful little shadows, and they bring home trinkets, injured animals, and anything else they find remotely interesting. You are treated to their caches in the house, which you have made a point of appropriating every time you find one; finders keepers. 

However, you turn out every single stray the moment they recover; you have no fondness for animals and you aren’t running a pet shop, you say as much. You think a dog would at least be useful, especially as the three of you are getting older, but they never bring one home.

* * *

The strongest case you have for them being Illya’s is when it’s time for them to choose their last name. The other two passed without much fanfare, but the twins have requested all of you be present at the dining table. So you are seated there; Illya at the head, you and Gaby at his side. The twins file in, solemn looking. They sit at the opposite end, together, and you cannot help but lean back to enjoy it. They hold the tension in the room in their hands, but not for long. “Well?” Gaby asks. Faces split into identical wicked grins as they look at each other, and then dramatically chirp in unison, _“Solo.”_

Silence falls over the table. 

You are the first to break it; you laugh, and brightly. You can’t help it — perhaps it’s fitting, that there’s one for each of you. It certainly appeals to your sense of symmetry, and you appreciate as well that they’ve rehearsed this moment. Illya has sweet David, Gaby has elegant Victoria, and you are stuck with these two scamps. “I like it,” you say, once you have pulled yourself together, and you see Gaby rolling her eyes and Illya shaking his head, murmuring, “Of course you do.” There are two of them, and the name is no longer an arrogant proclamation or a deliberate mask. It is an expression of how singular they both are. You approve. 

And only Illya’s boys would have seen the humor in the choice. Any son of yours would have been an uncomfortable mirror, burdened with your vices, held captive by your legacy. But his have no such restraints, and they are free to worm their way into your heart. You have had a while to become acquainted with the use of the muscle, and offer the pieces of it to the four children that live in your castle, and the two to whom you have given all of yourself.

You have had time, to learn how you love them. Your hunger is fed every day, every night, and though you made Napoleon Solo to be dissatisfied always with the present, you have learnt to turn it outwards, to push them forward. They have taken what they wanted from you: the part of yourself that keeps moving — forward and onward, and above all, close to you, closer together. 

They will never fly solo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written after [Victoria's one-shot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18786727); some details overlap, and some are spread out between that fic and this one.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
